How do you create an effective plan?
If you’re working on your own, you might:
- Start off by identifying your goal
- Produce a work breakdown structure to identify the tasks required to achieve the goal
- Identify the dependencies between the tasks
- Come up with estimates for each task
- Add resources
- And so on.
But what would you do next?
The chances are that you would send this draft plan out to others for their comments and that’s where you’d go wrong. If you’re lucky you’ll receive back some great feedback. However, you are more likely to fail to get sufficient responses to challenge your plan and as a result you won’t get what you really need, which is a plan that really works.
So, what do you need to do to create a plan that works? Here are seven key steps that will help you to do just that.
Step 1 – Start off with the goal
You need to be clear what the goal is so that your planning efforts are aimed at the right target. As well as the goal, spend time with your stakeholders working out what success looks like to them. This will bring your goal to life and help you to describe the target that you are trying to hit.
Step 2 – Decide which workstreams you need in order to achieve your goal
Breaking the project into workstreams is essential for grouping or segmenting similar activities. Each workstream may become a sub-project or work package in its own right, but does not have to. Each workstream though should be owned by one person who will be accountable for its delivery. For a small project that could be the same person for more than one workstream. For larger projects it is best that these are shared out between different people.
Step 3 – Choose key milestones for each workstream
Once you have decided on your workstreams, it’s time to decide on the milestones for each workstream. Your milestones will mark significant points on the way to your goal. Start off by working backwards from the end of the project. Make each milestone reflect the end of an activity, not the start and use plain and simple language. Make sure that the milestones reflect the delivery of something that is valuable to the business rather than to the project. Too many milestones make it difficult to see the big picture, so keep the number of milestones small, to perhaps 5-7 per workstream.
Once you have your milestones in place you have the essential elements of your high level plan. This will determine the overall shape and approach for your project. You can use this high level plan to report progress to your key stakeholders, since they are unlikely to want to know the detail. Next comes the detail.
Step 4 – Add in work products needed for each milestone
Take each milestone in turn and decide what you need to do in order to achieve this milestone. Try to focus on tangible products or artefacts, rather than the work that you think you need to do. One easy way to do this is to produce a set of pre-printed cards, based on your organisation’s project or delivery methodology, where each card represents a work product or artefact. The benefit of using cards is that you get consistency when planning projects, as each project will consist of the same set of products to start off with. If a particular work product isn’t needed for your project, just set the card to one side. If you are completing a project in stages and you don’t need a number of cards for the particular stage that you are planning then again, set the cards to one side. If, on the other hand, you have a project that requires new work products just create new work product cards.
Step 5 – Add in mandatory work products
Once you’ve identified the work products you need to create to achieve the objectives of the project, add in the additional products that you need in order to control your project. You need to build these in otherwise they won’t get done and you increase the risk of not delivering. These include artefacts related to:
- Plans and schedules
- Costs and Budget
- Risk Management
- Benefits realisation
Step 6 – Confirm the key dates and constraints
Once you’ve developed your plan based on the milestones and work products you now need to confirm that the proposed plan can be completed in the available time. If no target date has been set you need to decide how long it will take to deliver. You will also need to decide whether there are any key constraints that may affect your proposed plan. These may include resource constraints, time constraints, budgetary constraints or other potential bottlenecks which may hold you up. Add these constraints to your plan and review whether the objective is still achievable. If not, you will need to replan until you are satisfied that you can deliver despite the constraints.
Step 7 – Add in project governance
The final step is to add in the structure to your project for monitoring and control. These are points where you will want to confirm that your project is on target, the required benefits are still worth pursuing and risks are being managed. Add in the required project phases or stages that reflect your project life cycle. Also add in governance gateways, those points where you will want to obtain approval to proceed from your project steering group, along with the funding that you need to proceed.
So, to wrap up, here’s how to build up a plan logically:
- Start off with the end goal in mind, describe what success will look like
- Divide your project into workstreams of activity, where each workstream focuses on a particular aspect of the project
- For each workstream identify a small number of key milestones that you can use to measure progress
- Identify the low-level work products or artefacts you need to achieve the milestone
- Add in mandatory project controls
- Add in project dependencies and constraints
- Break your project into phases and add in your governance review points
‘Project Planning: How To Create an Effective Plan, Step by Step’ Copyright © 2016 Bryan Barrow. All Rights Reserved.
Connect with us: +07954 435456 | info@bryanbarrow.com
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